The Awakening

he morning was full of sunlight and hope. Edna could see before her no
denial—only the promise of excessive joy. She lay in bed awake, with
bright eyes full of speculation. “He loves you, poor fool.” If she
could but get that conviction firmly fixed in her mind, what mattered
about the rest? She felt she had been childish and unwise the night
before in giving herself over to despondency. She recapitulated the
motives which no doubt explained Robert’s reserve. They were not
insurmountable; they would not hold if he really loved her; they could
not hold against her own passion, which he must come to realize in
time. She pictured him going to his business that morning. She even saw
how he was dressed; how he walked down one street, and turned the
corner of another; saw him bending over his desk, talking to people who
entered the office, going to his lunch, and perhaps watching for her on
the street. He would come to her in the afternoon or evening, sit and
roll his cigarette, talk a little, and go away as he had done the night
before. But how delicious it would be to have him there with her! She
would have no regrets, nor seek to penetrate his reserve if he still
chose to wear it.

Edna ate her breakfast only half dressed. The maid brought her a
delicious printed scrawl from Raoul, expressing his love, asking her to
send him some bonbons, and telling her they had found that morning ten
tiny white pigs all lying in a row beside Lidie’s big white pig.

A letter also came from her husband, saying he hoped to be back early
in March, and then they would get ready for that journey abroad which
he had promised her so long, which he felt now fully able to afford; he
felt able to travel as people should, without any thought of small
economies—thanks to his recent speculations in Wall Street.

Much to her surprise she received a note from Arobin, written at
midnight from the club. It was to say good morning to her, to hope she
had slept well, to assure her of his devotion, which he trusted she in
some faintest manner returned.

All these letters were pleasing to her. She answered the children in a
cheerful frame of mind, promising them bonbons, and congratulating them
upon their happy find of the little pigs.

She answered her husband with friendly evasiveness,—not with any fixed
design to mislead him, only because all sense of reality had gone out
of her life; she had abandoned herself to Fate, and awaited the
consequences with indifference.

To Arobin’s note she made no reply. She put it under Celestine’s
stove-lid.

Edna worked several hours with much spirit. She saw no one but a
picture dealer, who asked her if it were true that she was going abroad
to study in Paris.

She said possibly she might, and he negotiated with her for some
Parisian studies to reach him in time for the holiday trade in
December.

Robert did not come that day. She was keenly disappointed. He did not
come the following day, nor the next. Each morning she awoke with hope,
and each night she was a prey to despondency. She was tempted to seek
him out. But far from yielding to the impulse, she avoided any occasion
which might throw her in his way. She did not go to Mademoiselle
Reisz’s nor pass by Madame Lebrun’s, as she might have done if he had
still been in Mexico.

When Arobin, one night, urged her to drive with him, she went—out to
the lake, on the Shell Road. His horses were full of mettle, and even a
little unmanageable. She liked the rapid gait at which they spun along,
and the quick, sharp sound of the horses’ hoofs on the hard road. They
did not stop anywhere to eat or to drink. Arobin was not needlessly
imprudent. But they ate and they drank when they regained Edna’s little
dining-room—which was comparatively early in the evening.

It was late when he left her. It was getting to be more than a passing
whim with Arobin to see her and be with her. He had detected the latent
sensuality, which unfolded under his delicate sense of her nature’s
requirements like a torpid, torrid, sensitive blossom.

There was no despondency when she fell asleep that night; nor was there
hope when she awoke in the morning.